The man who loved letters

I wasn't aware of this stunning book until I saw it featured in a title I reviewed recently:  Bibliographics: 100 Classic Graphic Design Books . It reproduced five spreads from the book and I knew I had to have a copy. Though published in 1988 copies are available but rather pricey, the pre-used copy I bought was in perfect condition, fortunately.

I was aware of Thompson's work for Westvaco Inspirations but didn't know he designed sixty issues over twenty-four years and rather amazingly he was asked to take over the design when he was only twenty-seven. There are 160 glorious pages devoted to Inspirations with plenty of large reproductions of spreads and they clearly show Thompson's exuberance and joy for type, color and creative page design. It was interesting to see, that by 1942, he was using his trademark style of graphics and type printed in process colors. His Alphabet 26 gets a good showing with thirteen pages reproducing nine Inspiration spreads.

The remaining fifty-odd pages in the book cover stamp design for USPS, magazine covers, a long section on book design especially Westvaco's yearly Christmas keepsakes which Thompson designed for twenty-five years. One of which was the now famous 'Red Badge of Courage' from 1968 with a hole punched through the pages to simulate a bullet hole, inspired by stories of Civil War soldiers whose lives had been saved by a pack of cards or something else they had in their clothing. The last book featured is the Bible which Washburn College, Topeka, asked Thompson to design. The sample pages shown reveal a mastery of type design with ragged right text and perhaps more importantly setting the lines with natural breaks rather than the contrived line breaks that had been a traditional way of text setting in all previous Bibles. Thompson's 'Washburn Bible' was published in 1980 by Oxford Uni Press and can still be picked up cheaply. A remarkable publication.

'The Art of Graphic Design' is an amazing book that will intrigue any publication designer and others, it celebrates the life of a great creative mind and his timeless design work for the printed page.